Book Review: The March

I just finished The March by E.L. Doctorow. I was excited to read it because Ragtime is one of my favorite books, and I really like Doctorow's style. His novels are fictional, but they are often driven by a compelling historical setting (the early 1900's in Ragtime, and end of the Civil War in The March). He has fictional characters interact with historical characters (often taking a good amount of authorial privilege in representing the historical characters in a way that fits into his fictional narrative). Historians blast him for being historically innacurate, but I never saw where he made any claims to historical authenticity. He is telling a story. He also tells the stories of a fairly large number of vastly different characters whose lives criss-cross within the backdrop of the historical setting. This technique is becoming all the rage in Hollywood right now (think Crash and Babel), but post-modern novelists like Doctorow have been doing it for decades.

Anyway, I really enjoyed The March. Good characters, good stories, interesting historical setting.

The Jackie Chiles Law Society

I wanted to give some props to a new club up at the University of Utah's law school: The Jackie Chiles Law Society. It was started this year by some second year law students, and it has taken the law school by storm. I'm just sorry it wasn't started earlier so that I could have been a part of it. Its named for Jackie Chiles, the hyper-stereotyped attorney on Seinfeld. This is the club's mission statement: "The Jackie Chiles Law Society seeks to analyze America's view of the Law based on how popular culture portrays it. To accomplish this goal, the organization engages legal students, scholars and professionals in meaningful discussion about music, television, movies, and other forms of popular culture that touch on American legal issues." Among other things, they have had criminal law professors deconstruct the trial of Crusty the Clown, they have had one professor talk about Hank Hill's philosophy of federal and administrative law, and they have had an intellectual property professor talk about what we can learn about fair use from Nirvana, Seinfeld, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. But the capstone event was their end-of-year banquet, where Phil Morris, the actor who played Jackie Chiles, was the keynote speaker!

Here's a link to the society's web site. Its actually pretty fun to peruse. They have about 20 officers, including some who are designated experts in certain areas of pop culture (Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Boston Legal, Arrested Development, music, etc.). They also have a video invitation to their end-of-year banquet that is pretty clever.

Their banquet has garnered some media attention. Here's an article about it from the Deseret News, and here's a link to an interview on KCPW (the local NPR affiliate) with the society's founder and with the faculty advisor (the interview is a about 15 minutes long, but its really interesting).

I May Have Missed My Calling in Life

Last Wednesday, Katie and I went to the bakery at Welfare Square to fill a welfare assignment. The bread had already been made earlier that morning by the employees and service missionaries, and it was up to us to slice and bag the bread. I manned the industrial slicing machine. A service missionary fed the bread loaves into the machine, and I worked the pedal that sliced the loaves. After being sliced, the loaf would fall down to me, and I would slide the bread into a bag that was being filled with air by a fan. I would then hand the bagged loaf of bread to Katie, who would make sure I hadn't punctured the bag and then put a twistie-tie on the bag. Slice, bag, pass to Katie, slice, bag, pass to Katie . . . . It was a delicate waltz, and I was Strauss.

I had to leave a little early to get to work, and as I was leaving, another volunteer approached me. He said that he had volunteered at the bakery for years and had never seen someone work the slicer machine so expertly. I may have missed my calling as an industrial machinist.

A Few Thoghts on Writing

One of my judge's favorite quotes on writing is by Elmore Leonard: "I try to leave out the parts that people skip." Its a great quote, and its great advise. I have the good fortune to spend a good portion of every day writing. I write memoranda recommending dispositions on the various cases we hear at the court, and I write drafts of opinions that we publish announcing the results of the case and explaining the law supporting those results. I feel like I have progressed as a writer in my time here at the court.

My judge is an exceptional writer, and I have learned a lot of good things about writing from him. I have learned to leave out the parts that people skip (overwrought "roadmaps"); I have learned not to start a sentence with "however" because it sounds too ponderous; I have learned not to let writing get too easy (in legal writing, there are lots of terms that are so overused that they are almost cliches, like the word "progeny"); and I have learned that it is worth your time to incorporate metaphors and tropes into your writing.

Metaphor and trope is my judge's specialty. He spends a lot of time editing our draft opinions and adding what he calls his "rhetorical flourishes." Here is an excellent example: "Arguments based on symmetry have a superficial appeal because they appear to be linked to equal treatment and thus to fundamental fairness. But more often than not, symmetry is quickly exposed as a false prophet of fairness. This is one such case." State v. Robison, 147 P.3d 448.

Here's to good writing and to all of us continuing our blogging (or starting to blog) as a continued outlet to sharpen our writing skills.